CLASSIC DRIVE
The six-cylinder XJ-S was also offered in coupe form and quickly became the thinking man’s choice.We find a remarkable survivor
ADDING A six-cylinder option to the XJ-S may have been a convenient way to test the market for an all-new engine design but it had a welcome bonus in that it also gave the car itself an entirely new lease of life.
As John Egan himself once admitted to us, by the early 1980s the XJ-S was selling so slowly that production had effectively stopped as unsold cars began to pile up in the system. The car was still well regarded but suddenly the V12 engine’s complexity and immense thirst – even in HE form – had done nothing to help its appeal in the market, especially as competitors were catching up with six-cylinder and V8 engines.
Initially the six-cylinder car wasn’t marketed heavily, produced in smaller numbers while effort was devoted to sorting the refinement of the early AJ6 engines, which meant that sales were modest rather than significant. That of course was a blessing in disguise given that those very early XJ6 engines needed to be virtually hand-built.
Before long though, positive road tests began to make their mark and the moribund XJ-S gained a new wind, its newfound appeal helped by, but certainly not limited to, the Cabriolet.
It’s popularly assumed that it was the Cabriolet model which introduced the 3.6 engine but in reality an AJ6-powered coupe was introduced at the same time with a distinct lack of fanfare but would in fact go on to be the bigger seller – not just more popular than the Cabriolet but eventually the V12 car too.
The unexpected but welcome result of offering the smaller engine option in the XJ-S was that rather than a lesser ‘entrylevel’ option, it created a car with an entirely different character, one which had more in common with the E-Type in some ways than the wafting V12 model.
This was chiefly the result of the sixcylinder’s more eager demeanour, the AJ6 being happier to rev harder than the lazy V12, which – in two-cam production form, anyway – doesn’t encourage you to drive it hard. On paper, that doesn’t make a lot of sense since the V12 produces its maximum power at 5500rpm against the AJ6’s lower 5300rpm, but in practice the smaller engine is happier to spin up and it’s this which gives the 3.6 its character.
